I am working freelance on an animated show for children, animating characters in flash, and I have a problem that is driving me crazy.

I will try to explain it so it won't be too confusing..

This just happened on the file I am working on now, an animation of a character walking: The graphic symbol containing the legs had two keyframes in it (on frame 1 and 2) when I saved the file. When I reopened it, the legs had only keyframes on frame 1. When I check the swf I exported just before saving, the legs are fine.

Similar problems has happened many times now, sometimes keyframes are gone, other times they have turned blank, and on one occation graphic symbols had changed to empty movie clip symbols. The last swf exported has always been okay.

It has also happened when closing and immediately reopening, so I have ruled out sabotage..

I am using Flash 5.5, but the scenes are handed out by someone working in Flash 3 or 4. I import characters frome different documents into the scene. This often leads to many graphics symbols with the same name, but I make sure to put them in different folders, and also sometimes renaming the symbols. I suspected that could be the problem, but it doesn't seem to have been the case this time.

No one else on the team have experienced the same, though I am the only one working in Flash 5, if that matters.

I'm not sure I understand what you meant, but my goal is to avoid the problem so I don't have to recreate anything.

The error always occur when I have worked on the file for some time, not when I open the original file made in a previous Flash-version. In this particular case, Flash has removed some new keyframes I made in the leg-layers.

The problem mentioned here is a very serious issue with Fash CS5 and Flash CS5.5 which we (a huge agency working a lot with Flash CS5) haven't found a solution for, yet.

The problem can be described as simple as the following:

You create an animation in some movieclip, save the file, close it, reopen it, and the movieclip is still there, but the animation is gone!!!!

Or: You change the animation in some movieclip, save the file, close it, reopen it, and the changed animation is gone, only the old state is in the movieclip.

Or: You have a movieclip containing only a simple PNG file. The PNG file is changed externally, you reimport it to the movieclip, deleting/overwriting the old one, save the file, close it, reopen it, and the old PNG is in there again, the changed one not even in the library or somewhere else.

Or: You have a movieclip containing only a static text field. You change the text in the textfield, save the file, close it, reopen it, and guess what, the old text is in there.

These problems occur totally randomly!!!! Sometimes they occur, sometimes they don't. Sometimes only one movieclip was affected, sometimes several ones. Sometimes it's only a small thing missing, like a text in a textfield, like a PNG that can be easily replaced, but often enough it's a whole timeline animation which we worked on for several hours.

This is almost like not being able to save at all!!!!

But hey Adobe, we already found a really decent workaround to avoid this problem your happy software confronts us with!!!

The trick is: don't close the file you're working on, don't close flash either, and don't turn off your computer over night. EVER! Leave everything open until the project is finished and payed for by the client.

Seriously, we're thinking about claiming our money back, aswell as the extra money payed to the electricity company for keeping the computers running all night. Let alone those hundreds of hours of work wasted for nothing but the excitement.

If you're interested, i can show you a screen capture of one of these problems occuring.

We're working mainly on MacOS 10.6 , but the problem seems to have occured on different operatings systems like Windows7 aswell.

And before you ask: it changes nothing if we save the file on a server or locally or create 10 backup-copies.

I'm sorry for the inconvience it has caused .We are actively working on resolving these issues .

Can you please provide me some more information below .

This just happened on the file I am working on now, an animation of a character walking: The graphic symbol containing the legs had two keyframes in it (on frame 1 and 2) when I saved the file. When I reopened it, the legs had only keyframes on frame 1. When I check the swf I exported just before saving, the legs are fine.

How was the keyframe 2 create ? Did you copy / paste frame or drag a frame ? Did you do all the updates before copy frames ?

Keyframe 2 as I recall was created by alt-dragging keyframe 1. The keyframe contained a foot-symbol and a leg-symbol. I deleted the leg-symbol from the frame and used the brush to draw a new leg position.

This also happened to another symbol, containing different mouths, where I added a new blank keyframe and made a new mouth with the brush. The keyframe with the new mouth was also gone along with the legs.

I can't remember all the steps before and after copying, but the file was fine when it was saved at the end of the day..

Anyway, this has happened before in different ways and with different layers (not always layers I have added keyframes to).

I am not at the office at the time of writing, but I will see if I can find a couple of the files containing the problem and email them to you as soon as possible.

EDIT: "Can you forward me a file where this happens?" - No, because this can happen in EVERY file, wether it's old, new, from the scratch. I once tested it with creating a complety new file, created a movieclip, added a png, changed the PNG externally, reimported it, saved the file, closed the file, reopened it. Guess what, the old PNG was in there... Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. This is completely random and must have something to do with some internal versioning that Flash CS5 / CS5.5 is doin...

Yeah, I've tried saving often with new version numbers in the file name (v01, v02, v03 etc.) so if the problem would happen I could go back and hopefully copy/paste from an older file.

However, I once opened the newest version of a file and saw that lots of stuff where missing. When I then opened every file from v08 or whatever and all the way to v01, the same error was in all the versions! Even in the backups on dropbox.

YES!!! I am having this problem too! I am using CS5.5 for the first time (after using cs4/5 normally) and have been noticing it is deleting chunks of animation! I know these frames were there when I saved as the keyframe on that symbol is assigned to a frame inside the symbol that now no longer exists! (also I checked the export swf and the frames are still there)

I always save incrementally so at least twice a day I will put a new version number (as Flash CS4 is so unreliable I had to as it corrupted often) but when I went back to the older versions, to see if I could copy and paste the frame, it had disappeared, lost forever! So I had to re-do it!

There is no pattern to what it does, sometimes it will be fine (I just re-did the missing frames, saved, closed and re-opened and it was fine) So why did it delete the frames on previous files?

With the last file this happened to, as I had finished animating, I previewed it was fine, saved and closed. When I opened it this morning and was showing the client, that's when I found the frames were missing! So unprofessional!

This is a serious problem and after paying money for CS4 too that was such a pile of rubbish and wasted a lot of my time, I really think we should be given refunds! You would NOT except this poor performance from anything else.

It's a relief to see that other people have these problems, too.. we (me and at least 4 more workmates) sometimes start wondering if we're nuts or got a virus or something. Another explanation would be Apple, corrupting FLA files intentionally...

Yes I know I was relieved to see this thread as many times I have had major problems (especially with CS4) and it feels like I'm the only one!

I have asked workmates in other studios and they haven't always had the same problems but then there as so many ways of animating I think it's a combination of things! We have had crazy CS5 problems in this current stdio though, (when it first came out, often 'undo' wouldn't work and would place random keyframes and blocks of frames as you were pressing 'cmd+z')

Flash really is a nightmare and I've often wanted to get my money back!

Well, I'm glad I found this thread as I will be waiting to upgrade. For those who have tired workarounds, does this only occur after saving and closing, or does it happen just by saving, moving on to another part of the file, and coming back? Does it make any difference if you save before closing, or closing and saving by the prompt? What about closing without saving - will previosly working animations become corrupted? Or, does it seem that the problem occurs when reopening? Does the library not retain entire elements or symbols, or just previous versions?

It used to only happen when I saved and closed, then re-opened. However I have had an instance recently where I saved the file under a different name (I save incrementaly so, _v001, _v002 etc) I didn't close it but it had undone all the changes I'd just made. For me, it often (but not always) happens when I change the name of the file.

It's so random though there aren't any solid workarounds or 'causes' that I have found.

It often occurs when re-opening but as I explained above, I have one instance where I didn't close it but the errors still occured. (this may be because you often do the final save as you close it, and don't check again)

The problem I've mainly had is it deleting keyframes within symbols, it doesn't delete the symbols just removes some of the frames of animation.)

Most commonly for me I've been using an arm symbol with 3 keyframed poses. On saving and reopening frames 2 and 3 have disappeared.

From the descriptions, it sounds random enough that it's doesn't even affect a set of most recent changes? Like, if you made 4 keyframes with content in order, it may come back with 1 and 4 intact but 2 and 3 missing? But if it is just most recent, that would point to perhaps some sort of previous version, which doesn't seem to be the case, or some temp file. I don't think Flash does auto saves (maybe in CS5?), but maybe it creates something like it at certain times, like maybe when testing the file. The issue of the library going whack was brought up, which is possible. Like maybe it's getting confused with duplicated movie clips - like when you duplicate a clip and rename it, and rename any nested symbols. But maybe it still thinks they're the same. One thing I would try, would be to make a copy of the MC and just keep in n the library - and see if the same thing happens to the copy.

Lon - No it only seems to delete end frames,so won't delete frames in the middle. So if I made 5 keyframes in order, it would often delete all of them except frame 1. CS5.5 does have autosave. Which is why I thought it seems to be reverting to some previously saved files (although not all, as keyframes I have added on the outside of the symbol after creating them inside, remain intact)

Sukhi - Unfortunately saving the file before I create every single tween/keyframe/frame of animation is not a practical work around at all. As Flash always does the 'save and compact' everytime you save (causing the 'loading' bar to appear) it would slow me right down.

I will forward the file. I can send you the latest file it has corrupted with the frames missing inside the symbol? Is that what you mean?

It does seem to be, with me, that having a file open, then saving it under a different name, then corrupts both. Maybe if I only change the names of files once they are closed this would help for now.

Adobe has actually posted in this thread, something they rarely do as this is a user to user forum, not a support form. I wouldn't consider that being ignored. They can't keep posting the same thing everyday, that they are working on it.you may be right about the issue being with the library and not with deleting keyframes - but from what I've read here, missing keyframes are the only effect of the issue, so what's the difference? If you draw a shape, and fill it with red, then later change it to blue - does it ever revert back to red? I would think if it were a library issue, then you'd see a wider variety of symptoms like that, not just missing keyframes.

I have just installed the trial version 2 days ago May 2012. I have had the exact same issues.

basically, art work in symbols (graphic in my case) the newer keyframes disappear to and earlier version of the work. but keyframes in the main timeline remain. leaving the graphic symbol frame number on the timeline that has had the removed artwok, so it shows nothing. (because the art work was removed)

I have just installed updates. am I foolish to believe the latest trial version would not have been updated?

Thanks a ton-Hopefully all these comment's made Adobe act swift - I had no idea there was a patch/update. CS5's new update pretty much has seemed to fix all my problem's (which of course-brought me here-which is MUCH better than spending the hour-ish I did on Google. Should have known better...lol)...